#Mamavation Monday - Hello Paleo Pals!

That's right Kid Approved! Our Crossfit gym now has these awesome Paleo Pals meals for sale! It's premade fresh, and all you do is heat and serve. This is what I have been eating all week. It's not cheap but it's healthy and clean eating. I don't have to worry about cooking it myself or feeding to my family and having the whole meal rejected. There are so many benefits I could go on and on. Check out the video and see if you find it inspiring!

Eating out: Chick-fil-a (twice), Mongolian BBQ

My Work Outs this past week-

7/16 - 7/21 Crossfit sprinkle in a 200m Swim. 

My details are here on Daily Mile.

Scale Reading- 163 which is a - 3 pound loss from last week. Honestly I'm doing the same thing I always do but I did change my eating for the week. I think that is the reason for the success.

Stress Level - I'm on meds! Whoo Hoo.... that is all.

The UP side - Fitcation is coming!

Injury prevention is important!

Be a good role model.
A special reminder for us all...

Need for fitness support? Join the "Sistahood". More great resources: The Y, Crossfit Training, Vitamins for your age group, RealAge.com

• The long term goal 37 pounds by the end of the year.
• The short term goal lose 3 lbs. per month. 
• January 172 - 160 = 12 pound loss (this is Paleo!)
• February 165 - 161 = 4 pound loss
• March 166- 165 = 1 pound loss
• April 165 - 162 = 3 pound loss
• May 163 -164 = 1 pound gain
• June 165 -163 - 2 pound loss
• July 164 -
• August
• September
• October
• November
• December

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#30DayPaleoChallenge - Day 28 - Day 30

Where did the last three days go? I'm not sure but it really did fly. It's the end. The challenge is over and I made it. Using our point system I earned a total of 4 points. I didn't win the challenge but who cares because I finished. This is one of my lessons learned, I'm a finisher. Let me back track here a little bit.

Beef! It's what's for dinner.

Since I have been on the challenge my husband has made this yummy guacamole about five times.

This was the kid section at the beginning of the challenge!

They put a huge dent in it! This is good because I cleared this out and stuck it all in the pantry.

I cleared out all the cabinets! Partly because with my herniated disk I can't reach up high.

Nothing says reorganize your kitchen like, "You have a herniated disk and oh by the way there is a cyst on your kidney go have that checked out!" At least it's completely functional and prepared to cook just about anything.

According to all the various scales I had a 12 pound loss doing this challenge. I'm glad too because I haven't been able to get near the calorie burn that I have become accustomed too. My husband went from 265 to 189 with his cholesterol level. He eats a banana for breakfast & lunch and then eats what I cook for dinner. I'm not sure that is the healthiest way to go about it but it worked for him. What's next? I don't know. My trainer says to slowly add things back into my diet one by one to see how my body responds. I'm a little freaked out because I've been eating clean for so long now that I'm afraid of that one cookie. It could send my whole body into shock. It's going to be an interesting journey that is for sure. I never stopped craving sweets or thinking about baked goods. Some people rave about how it's gone but it never left for me. I had to make a conscious effort daily not to give in. Now that the challenge is over there is nothing standing between me and a Loft House cookie! We'll see what happens. I'm glad to have had the support of my gym Crossfit Unity and for all the support on Facebook. The members were amazing and all the recipes were an education in ingredients I had never hear of! There are some recipes that I will keep and some that will never cross my path again! Would I recommend the challenge? YES. It's one of the hardest challenges that I have faced so far on my fitness journey. It can be done and I believe that you will be healthier for trying it 30 days.

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#30DayPaleoChallenge - Day 26 & 27

Loft House mini Valentine's Day cookies! I can explain. They were sent for a preschool party and these were the left overs. The teacher sent them back home with us. Goodness! I wanted to eat one so badly. I was getting a contact high just from all the sugar I could smell. It was enough to scare me into wondering what that would do to my stomach should I falter. The kids divided them up. They are learning to ration their treats because they know there won't be any more once it's gone. lol - They put them in a sandwich bag each and only eat a couple a day. Look at the good lessons they are learning with delayed gratification and all. Now for dinner using the Paleo method.

Mmmmm baked chicken legs with roasted broccoli and carrots! The veggies were good but if you take the skin off that chicken, it's bland city! The original recipe is here from Paleo Betty. Maybe the legs we used were too big because they were still raw after the recommended 45-50 minutes. I had to put them in another 20 minutes. I defaulted back to my love for lettuce wrap after mowing down my plate of veggies. The rest of the family ate it all up. Whoo Hoo!

Saturday mornings are a really fun time for breakfast at our house. We don't have to rush any where in the morning so we go BIG and stay home! This little guy is cooking up some Mice Melts from our seriously tattered Shrek cookbook that we won online about 4 years ago! It's an easy recipe.
Mice Melts
Slice English Muffins in half and toast them in the toaster.
Take 1 egg and whisk, add 1 cup grated cheese, salt, pepper and a dash of Worcestershire sauce.
Take your muffin half and put a piece of ham on it and add your cheese mixture.
Broil on Low or Medium until the cheese is golden brown. That's it!

 Here is my other little helper. She's buttering the blueberry pancakes! She's doing a great job!

This is my breakfast! It's a Blueberry Vanilla Protein Smoothie. I tried an almond and blueberry recipe that I found in Men's Health magazine but I didn't like it so I tweaked it into this yummy goodness right here.

Blueberry Vanilla Protein Smoothie Recipe:
2 scoops vanilla flavored protein
1 cup blueberries (frozen)
1 cup vanilla flavored almond milk
1 banana
Blend and there you will have yummy goodness!

3 Days!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Until tomorrow...

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#30DayPaleoChallenge - Day 24 & 25

Only 5 days left! Yesterday I opened up that jar of peanut butter to make my Silly her favorite PB&J. This time it didn't have that sweet yummy smell, no! In fact, it's almost gone and all I could smell was oil. GAK! It's no longer appealing. I'm not sure what happened. Check out these latest goodies that caught my eye.

Those Loft House cookies are ridiculous! I love to eat those. The Valentines day cookies just look super cute and Nutter Buttter cookies are my favorite. Mmmmmmmmmmmmm baked goods.

This morning I was so bored with eggs that I wanted to try something new!

Here is the recipe for Paleo Waffles:
1.5 cup almond flour
1/4 almond milk ( I used vanilla flavored)
2 large eggs
1 tsp sea salt
1 tsp baking soda
Dash cinnamon to taste ( I used 1 tsp cinnamon)

-Preheat your waffle iron
-Whisk eggs and milk
-Add dry ingredients
-Mix until smooth
You can top with almond butter or fresh fruit (I have yet to find almond butter)

Don't they look yummy? But how do they taste? Like GAK!!!!!!!! Flash backs to the apple banana muffins I made that looked and smelled delicious too. I'm now convinced that anything made with almond flour is going to have less flavor than a cardboard box. Please, don't take my word for it. Make them yourself and if you find flavor or have altered the recipe to create flavor let me know! I'm willing to try it. None of my kids liked them either. I thought maybe the strawberries would help but seriously! Why ruin a perfectly good strawberry?

Remember that mango ice cream? I tried the same recipe but with mixed fruit this time. It wasn't sweet at all so after it thawed out I threw it back in the blender and added a banana. Bingo! much better.

Recipe:
 1 cup almond milk (no flavor), 1 cup mixed fruit, 1 banana, blend and freeze.

Whoo Hoo!!!! Almost there folks.


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#30DayPaleoChallenge - Day 22 & 23

I can make it 7 more days I promise! If I haven't cheated by now I'm pretty sure it's a done deal. There has been enough emotional stress to break me already but I didn't break. :)

Here is that crock pot roast that we made. I added some carrots and celery to the mix and guess what?

It's Kid Approved!

This is the pineapple chicken. I wish I could say I was fan but I'm not. My chicken got too dry. Maybe overcooked too much in the crock pot????

I had to go with my back up plan, lettuce wraps. This time I added that guacamole salsa on top! WOW was that awesome. It was a perfect topping. In a few minutes I'm gonna go make another one. lol

Today was a super busy day! It's days like these when the protein shakes come in handy. I had chocolate powder so I came up with this one.

Chocolate Banana Smoothie
1 scoop chocolate
1 cup Almond milk (non flavored)
2 Bananas
YUM!!!!!

I'm sure I put some ice in there but I can't remember. I think it works either way. Only 7 days left and I've rocked another challenge. Feels good.


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#30DayPaleoChallenge - Day 21

It's Sunday and after 21 days I finally got a clue! I'm not sure why it took so long to sink in but it finally did. That or maybe it was after I ran through the grocery budget for the month and there is clearly still  9 days left until the next payday and we ARE going to need more food.
Today we planned out mostly what we are eating this week and looked at all the recipes and got everything we needed all at once. Maybe this will keep me from going to the grocery store nearly every day. That is super annoying. We have two crock pots and they are both going! First up...

I did a Google search for a crock pot roast Paleo of course and came up with this recipe on I Eat Mostly Meat. I didn't catch it at first but while making it the recipe calls for beef bullion and Worcestershire sauce. The ingredients are high fructose corn syrup in the sauce and sugar in both. Sounds nit picky but I have literally not had either. It's too late though because it's all in "Felix The Crock."

My husband's crock was named when he was 19 and that was a while back, just saying. This crock pot has been around a looooong time. Back to the recipe - It calls for a whole onion and that just seems like a LOT of onion in there. It's smells good but we'll see how it goes.

In my crock pot that remains nameless we are trying a recipe variation that was shared in our Facebook group by Heather Jackson. You can find her stuff on Pinterest. It's Pineapple Chicken and I'm not to sure about it but I'm going in! We used this recipe but substituted the meat for chicken and we didn't use cranberries. Next up! The Guacamole Salsa...

I'm happy we have the Cuisineart but I always tend to revert back to my Ninja! I love it.

Finally I found something that welcomes a celery stick! It's so HOT that your mouth is happy when it gets the cool celery.

Got the fish right this time! Here's the Salmon and we went with a lot of lemon.

Honestly it didn't taste that great to me but my little girl ate it UP! I mean she went to town. We fixed the Tilapia too but she didn't like it as much but our oldest son loved it! Our middle child didn't like either but he was a good sport about it.

For a side dish we went with squash! A little olive oil, salt, pepper and garlic salt and none of us really cared for it. lol - If you can make squash taste good, please...let me know! My Mother and Grandmother had come over this evening and I asked them but they didn't have any answers either. Oh well...until tomorrow.



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#30DayPaleoChallenge - Day 19 & 20

WOW! Only 10 more days? Are you kidding me? I'm almost there! My husband is ready to get back to his cheese.  I'm still trying to figure out how to make celery taste good. Guacamole is not working out. Yesterday we had to put our 14 year old dog down. I wanted to dive into a DQ Blizzard to drown my sorrows. I was really close!

I would have gone for the strawberry cheese quake. I got the kids the little mini sized ones just as a treat after karate and basketball. Instead of ice cream I bought fish! I don't like fish at all but I have to start working it into our menu. I thought I grabbed the Salmon but it turned out that I picked up Talapia instead.

We went with this super simple recipe from eHow. It's basically lemon juice the heck out of it!

I think I might have only eaten one because for me it was a super soft texture and I didn't know what to make of it. It started to stink up my house and that smell is what gets me every single time. I just can't stand that fish smell.

This afternoon I tried those lettuce wraps with turkey meat instead.

The only thing about turkey meat is that it can get dry really quickly. I don't like that part but we ate it and we were happy!

Tonight we tried a Paleo recipe for sweet potato fries. Now if you look at the photo on the recipe site it looks like yummy french fries but the recipe calls for these big wedges. No one really liked them. The taste wasn't bad but they were just kind of mushy. My husband will most likely end up eating the rest because he will eat just about anything.

I tried to fix them by cutting them into thinner pieces and sticking them back in the oven to get crunchy but I was not successful. Oh well....until tomorrow.

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#30DayPaleoChallenge - Day 17 & 18

Being on the go is one of the hardest parts of the challenge. I'm running errands and in stores and they have those displays right there by the check out and normally I would ignore them but when you're this far in some days it's hard. We were at Academy and there they were.....

An entire line of Jelly Bellys! I LOVE them but wait there's more....

Sports Beans!!!!! My absolute favorite. That cashier must have thought I had lost my mind. I'm there taking pictures and drooling. "Mam do you want to buy one?" "No! I can't." rofl.... it's hard to resist some days. I don't have any new recipes to share right now because I'm basically starting to eat the same stuff over and over.
On this day I had to go run more errands and I was running out of time and I was on the go and then....

I saw this restaurant. I have never been there but all of a sudden it looked really good to me. Up to this point I had not had any protein. I was getting fussed at on Facebook so I knew I better get some protein in for dinner.

I made steak and chicken! Now I have left overs so it will be easier to for the next day. Plus I chop up what I can so when I do need to grab something I can.

Now if I could just figure out how to make a piece of celery taste good!

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